


Of Bones and Gold

by Geyblade, peachiis



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, Slow Burn, angel au, angels/demons - Freeform, the one where keith is human and lance is oh so very not, wow ok this is GAY
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-29
Updated: 2016-10-15
Packaged: 2018-08-11 17:42:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7901803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Geyblade/pseuds/Geyblade, https://archiveofourown.org/users/peachiis/pseuds/peachiis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Angel AU)<br/>The one where Lance is an immortal angel with too much time on his hands, and Keith is a college student who doesn't know what to do with himself and works at a place called the Groovy Bean.<br/>The whole team is featured, but very Klance-centric. Will be updated at least twice a week, don't know how long it will be.<br/>CHAPTER 1 UPDATED: NOW BETA'D! EXPECT NEXT CHAPTER BEFORE 10/13!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. And We Go A-Drowning

Heaven isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. 

Lance sat, perched atop a cloud, viewing the planet spread beneath him with a lust unlike any he felt before. He saw the soul of every citizen of the planet, each one aflame and burning brightly, forming a spectacular rainbow of light across the surface of the Earth below him. It was quite a sight to see, beautiful even. What a contrast, he thought, that any being on that fair surface would only be shocked at the appearance of the angel currently viewing them from his seat high in their sky. In his heavenly state, he sported four piercing eyes, stacked two on each side of his face, which flashed bright gold when the sun hit them at just the right angle. His mouth was full of sharpened teeth, pristine and lethal. Long feathers grew from the shells of his ears, curving towards the back of his head in a multicolored and iridescent arc. Tan skin glowed in the light of this planet’s sun, the wings folded against his back also shining as they protected him from the chill of the harsh wind that blew at this altitude. The sharp gusts played with his hair, teasing it into a windswept mess atop his head. 

For all the worldly beings below, he looked like something out of a story book. A terrifying but angelic prince, with a most bittersweet gleam in his eye. However, that gleam stayed for but a moment, before it was replaced by something oddly devilish for an angel of the Heavens to wear upon his face. A smirk and a half-formed thought later, he was hurtling headfirst towards the planet, his wings furled in the dive as the earth rushed up at him.

The clouds and their condensation whipped past his face, and he spread his wings as the green surface of Earth got uncomfortably close. It was not long before he found himself on solid ground, having landed in a field full of flowers and plants native to this planet. What he had come to understand to be trees sprouted all around him, and he was perfectly hidden from any curious onlookers. After a proper glamour was placed on his Heavenly form, he appeared only to be a plain citizen of this planet. A human.

Unfortunately, glamours didn’t work for personality. Or knowledge, for that matter, which meant that no matter how much Lance looked human, he still couldn’t give anyone the time of day. He was also inclined to continue to view himself as a Heavenly being, better than all the mortal inhabitants of this planet. Although, to most, this would simply come off as similar to a New Yorker’s superiority complex.

And with the glamour set, Lance started on his way. It was always fun for him to discover new planets, but the other angels usually found it dull in contrast to, you know, being literally divine, all-powerful manifestations of light. Lance, on the other hand, was hopelessly in love with anything different from him. He was so used to himself, new things, especially new inhabited planets and their peoples, were refreshing. Plus, they gave him brand new ways to start mischief and disrupt the populace.

That’s when something caught his eye - well, eyes, he did have four of them, even if two were hidden under a glamour. A figure in a red jacket stuck out from among the crowd. There was something familiar about the flash of red, yet Lance could not place it for his life. Curiosity piqued, the angel began to trail after the person in the jacket.

He followed the person all the way to a small café, called the ‘Groovy Bean’. Lance felt himself filled with an urge to groan loudly at the absurdity of the name. He refrained, but thought that if the Groovy Bean were a real person, they would never live down the shaming Lance would put them through.

Following the human inside, Lance felt something tug at his subconscious. He had been here before, his mind told him. This place was familiar.

For a moment, he forgot himself and reached out for the red-clad figure who had entered the café in front of him. Grasping their shoulder, he pulled them back and his cobalt eyes were met with two deep, dark irises like so many pools of angry, roiling water. Lance’s breath hitched in his throat, this was all too much. Everything was too familiar and yet all too strange and all he knew was that there was no way he could stay any longer. Something in those round, surprised eyes drove him away, scared him to no end.

Lance ran out of the café, and he didn’t stop running. Angels could not physically run out of energy, as they rebuilt themselves at such a rate that by the time they ran out of energy there was already another store of it replenished. Soon he got somewhere less populated and he allowed himself to break his glamour and lift off from the ground on powerful wings. He felt their power thrumming through his body to the pumping of his heart, each lift in time with the beat thrumming in his ears. As he flew fervently, one thought pushed itself to the forefront of his mind: what had scared him so much?

Keith didn't know what the hell had just happened. All he knew was that he had been followed by the most stunning creep he’d ever seen, and the same creep had run away at full speed the second their eyes had met.

Keith needed to take a minute. Or several.

He lost track of how long he’d been sitting silently at the booth until his friend and coworker at the Groovy Bean shook him out of his stupor. “Yo, Keith, Earth to Keith! This is mission control, has your brain stopped working altogether?” Matt was practically shouting in Keith’s ear. Keith shook the ‘holy crap what just happened’ from his thoughts and locked eyes with the other man.

Returning to his usual grumpy self, he retorted as snarkily as possible, “What, Matt?” 

With a raised eyebrow, Matt turned back, tossing Keith’s apron behind himself. “Nothing, just stop being all moonstruck and get back to work.”

Keith caught the apron and glared, “I am not ‘moonstruck’, I literally just got stalked all the way here!”

“Stalked by who?”

“You didn’t see him?”

“Would I be asking if I had?”

“Point taken.”

Work was uneventful, Keith never really invested himself into the stories the customers would drone on about. Maybe it was a sign of being the asshole Matt assured him he was, but he just couldn’t bring himself to care about other people’s stories. After the first dozen, he began seeing the patterns. There was a reason it was called the human experience, after all. They all had something in common: they were all painfully, awfully, unfortunately human.

By the time he wandered into his apartment above the coffee shop, he was dead tired. He managed to shed his jacket and work shirt before flopping onto his bed. Just as he was about to doze off, there was a flash outside his window, a streak of white feathers tipped in an array of multicolor. He blinked and shook his head. It was just a pigeon. Right?

He fell asleep, gently. 

He had been dead tired, and also dead wrong. Who was it outside his window, but the only angel who cared enough to get his hands dirty for the sake of getting to the bottom of a mystery.

 

He folded his wings against his back as far as they would go. He didn’t bother with a glamour - no one was conscious to see him in his divinity. Not that they could if he didn't want them to. Carefully, he slipped his fingers underneath the window frame, edging it open enough that he might get through. On softly padded foot, he slunk through into the apartment. Why was he here? What was he looking for? Hold on, do you think Lance actually thought this escapade through? Right in the middle of his rumination and pondering about the room he had climbed into, Lance heard a shuffling behind him.

Roused from his sleep, Keith heard what sounded like someone inside his apartment. In his room. He sat bolt upright, but in his half-asleep state, he didn’t fully register who was in his room. What was in his room. It didn't look human. What the hell was happening?

“Who the hell…” He trailed off, squinting as if that would somehow make the form come into clarity. 

The sound scared the hell out of Lance. His wings expanded to full length in shock, and all chaos broke loose, things going wrong one by one. Multiple books were knocked off Keith’s desk, his laptop barely making it without getting hit. Lance turned around when Keith jumped out of bed - his second, or third, or whatever mistake, as this proceeded to knock more things off the desk, and the bookshelf, and the wall, and this time Keith’s laptop was not quite so lucky. Keith watched in utter dismay as it bounced once, twice off the ground before settling. Then, everything was still.

Calm, almost.

“What the hell are you and what are you doing in my apartment?” Keith was not the kind to get loudly furious. When he was really, truly upset, it was dark as the ocean and twice as deep. It was low and dangerous and sent shivers down Lance’s spine.

Yet, Lance maintained his cocky composure. He was, after all, an angel of the other side, and one that delighted in causing mischief and annoyance. “Really? I come all the way down here to bless your sweet soul, and this is how you greet me?” Lance finished with an impish grin, his eyes feigning innocence, the look one that Keith wanted nothing more than to wipe off the… creature's face with a well-placed fist. 

Instead, he crossed his arms, as if to restrain himself. With narrowed eyes, Keith bit back the string of curses that threatened to spill from behind his sealed lips, going instead for the politest response he could muster: “This is how I greet anyone with the balls to break into my apartment. Bird people included.”

Lance sputtered. Did he just get compared to a bird? A damned, filthy bird? This was indignation at its finest. “Have you ever heard of angels, my pal, my buddy?” His tone was dry and flippant. He had no interest in wasting his time on a mortal, he only wanted to know everything about the mortal - not anything about the actual specimen themselves. This trip was to sate his curiosity, and this question was to uphold his honor.

With a tone as equally dry, Keith responded, “You mean the fat little babies in old paintings?”

With a sigh of frustration, Lance pinched the bridge of his nose, tilting his head back. “No, those things would be cherubs. I am an angel. You know, a being of pure light made to fly around the universe with not a care in the world, besides looking good and not messing with anything? Oh, and occasionally saving people in need of help. The usual business.”

“Yeah, okay. I’m calling the cops.” Keith reached into a pocket for his phone. Empty. Next pocket, this search, too, coming up empty-handed. Now he got frantic. Where was his phone? With a sigh he remembered: he had left his phone the coffee shop.

Lance had, by now, taken a few steps towards the hot-headed human.  
Reaching out a delicate hand, his tone softened. “Who are you?”

Keith was, honestly, weirded out by the sudden softness. But he answered nonetheless. “I’m Keith.”

Lance’s face twisted up with some kind of attempt to place that name. Where had he heard it before? Lance was now fully roped into this mystery that was Keith, and Keith himself was along for the ride now, whether he wanted to be or not.

And oh, what a wild ride it was bound to be.


	2. No One's Here to Sleep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just some more exposition, really :)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd as always by the lovely @Forest_Prince !  
> Title is from the Bastille song called "No One's Here to Sleep", because after this chapter there will be very little sleep for either the characters involved or the author/beta duo :)

Chapter 2: No One’s Here to Sleep

The next morning, Keith awoke with a start, mind reeling with the events of last night. The so-called “angel” was seemingly gone, but for some reason, he couldn’t remember when the... creature? man? had left, or even when he himself had fallen asleep. He pushed the thoughts from his mind, dismissing the events as completely fabricated images brought about by consuming too much caffeine. He'd never dreamt about bird people, or angels, or whatever before, but there's a first time for everything. Keith stopped thinking about the dream altogether, instead focusing on the work day ahead of him. Groggily rubbing his eyes, he made his way into the next room to make his ritual seven or so cups of coffee with which he starts the day. He shuffled into the living room with cup of joe number one, and promptly sat down on his couch.

He was not expecting his couch to yelp.

Shooting up from where he’d attempted to sit and causing the coffee in his mug to slosh everywhere, Keith looked down in bewilderment at the couch, only to have his eyes widen in surprise at the sight of another person, sprawled out in a haphazard manner - probably due to being sat on, but that wasn’t really Keith’s problem. This boy looked similar to the “angel” from Keith's dream, but was missing a few key features. Namely, the wings and second pair of eyes. Keith leaned in to get a closer look, as if the third and fourth eyes were possibly hidden behind messy hair, and was met with a palm in his face.

“Watch it, human,” Lance said, trying his best to come off as aloof and intimidating, but only managing slightly disconcerted at best. He had just been trying to get some sleep, however unnecessary it was for him to sleep, and this - this mortal just had to come and sit on him. Was that a human custom? Sitting on guests? Really? Lance was, frankly, offended. Yet he stayed, because he was still determined to find out what was so familiar and enthralling about a human with a dumb haircut.

Keith was equally as peeved, especially with some total stranger putting his hand on his face. Who does that? Keith deliberately grasped the other boy’s arm a little harder than necessary and forced the hand off his face, acting as though the other’s arm was some piece of trash and Keith was disposing of it. “Listen, who the hell are you?”

Lance was honestly surprised; his glamour really wasn’t super thorough - it didn’t make him unrecognizable from his Heavenly form, it just made said Heavenly form look human, or like whatever species he wanted, really. “You don’t remember me? You may want to get your head checked, buddy,” Lance feigned concern in his last sentence, raising his eyebrows to reflect the faked emotion, “However, since you asked so nicely, I’ll repeat myself. I’m Lance, angel of the Heavens, made of light, blah blah blah.”

Keith blinked. This guy was talking about the dream that Keith had had last night… How was that even possible? Furthermore, what was this guy doing in Keith's apartment? And why did he look so familiar?

With a borderline shocked face, Keith almost yelled, “You’re that guy from the coffee shop yesterday!”

Lance jumped at the sudden volume, but quickly reverted into his own judgmental deadpan. “Not the most observant, are we? Yes, I am the ‘guy’ you saw yesterday. And last night, might I add?”

“Oh God, you stalked me to work and then broke into my house. I am so calling the police,” Keith said, standing and hurrying to the door.

But he didn’t get far, as a sharp knock at the front door startled him into stopping. He had only taken a few more steps toward the door when it burst open, revealing yet another strange and frankly extremely unwelcome intruder in Keith’s life. This one sported black hair with a tuft of white at the front, as well as dark sunglasses to match an equally dark wardrobe. He wore a black leather jacket and dark jeans, as well as a pair of black combat boots to top off the 'punk rock biker’ vibe. A purple t-shirt stretched over large muscles - this guy looked ready to beat someone into the next world, and frankly, Keith was not eager to be that someone.

Walking right on in and right up to Lance, who had now brought himself to an upright sitting position on the couch, the stranger removed his sunglasses and Keith waited with bated breath for the fistfight he was sure was about to break out in his living room. It was entirely too early for two strangers to be trespassing in Keith's house.

“Hey,” The stranger started… softly? “Let’s go home, okay?”

Keith was absolutely baffled as to when and how his life had gotten so damn contradictory and confusing. “No, you've already broken in. Why don't you stay and we can have a nice chat. There's coffee in the kitchen,” he said, his tone flat.

The two intruders both ignored him, and Lance sighed as if in defeat, but then whined back, “But Shiro, I want to stay!”

‘Shiro’ extended a hand gloved in yet more leather to Lance, as though in an attempt to help him up. “C’mon Lance, there isn’t anything for us here of all places.” Lance took his hand with a huff and stood up, crossing his arms. Keith was just relieved that this meant that the Shiro guy would be taking Lance away and he could call the cops in peace.

That’s when Matt walked in, and the shitstorm continued. Keith was seriously considering a mandatory evacuation.

“Hey, Keith, you forgot your-“ Matt fumbled mid-sentence, taking in the sight before him. “-phone?”

Keith sighed. He was going to need something a lot stronger than coffee.

Sitting in a booth in the coffee shop, Shiro having somehow convinced Keith not to contact the authorities, two angels and two humans sat on opposite sides of the table between them. Shiro was explaining the reason that he was here at all, telling them that Lance had gone off without telling anybody and had interfered with mortals again. Lance sat with cheeks puffed and arms still crossed, looking for all the world like a two-year-old who was in the silent-treatment phase of tantruming.

“So, you guys are actual angels? Like, you work for God and whatnot? Keith, you've got angels appearing to you and shit. Be honest, are you the next Virgin Mary?” Matt asked, smiling that stupid smile he makes when he thinks he's made a good joke.

Keith stuttered a bit, and Shiro stepped in to save him from having to respond to the absurd question by avoiding it altogether. “Well, we don't 'work for God’. See, we angels don’t serve a specific lord so much as we serve a hierarchy. Gods are real, though maybe not in the form you humans understand them as, and they are above angels so to speak, but they are not our lords. Technically speaking, we answer to seraphs, who are right above us in terms of the hierarchy.”

“So if you answer to the 'seraphs’, and they answer to whoever's above them, and so on until the gods, wouldn't that technically make you angels of the gods via a hierarchical chain? So technically I was only off by one letter,” Matt quipped, giving Shiro his best shit-eating grin, or as Keith liked to call it, 'fuck off, Matt’.

Shiro looked only slightly offended, but slightly was all he needed; for a man whose default was ‘calm and collected father’, looking anything but carried far more weight than normal. 

“I mean, yes, but also very much no,” He began, now speaking not only with his mouth but also with his hands. “See, the hierarchy is really just that: a hierarchy. It’s not any indication of who has power over whom, just really an indication of social status, one much like the system of social status of your planet. Two people may have different social standing, but that doesn’t inherently mean one has power over the other.” Shiro seemed satisfied with his response, as though he had cleared up the misunderstanding, but, unfortunately, Matt was far from done. 

“Listen, angel, have you ever heard of the United Kingdom? Because let me tell you-”

“The point is, we don’t work for anyone but ourselves!” Lance chimed in suddenly, clearly trying to end the dispute. It had gotten rather annoying.

Matt, feigning innocence, raised his hands calmly. “I wasn’t tryin’ to upset anyone, pal, just stating my case.”

There was clearly tension between Matt and Lance, and Shiro had serious doubts about whether he’d be able to resolve it alone. 

“In any case, Lance, we’re going home. Now,” Shiro finished sternly, leaving no room for argument.

Of course, that doesn’t mean Lance didn’t shoehorn one in. “But, mom,” Lance began, drawing out the last word, his inner two year old shining brilliantly. With one frightening glance from Shiro, Lance found his mouth snapping shut. “...Fine,” he mumbled under his breath.

“Aw, do you guys have to go so soon?” Matt asked, clearly still curious, although he was trying desperately to hide it under sarcasm.

Keith elected to stay silent, especially since the ‘Virgin Mary’ remark, and because he was still pissed that the two 'angels’ had literally broken into his house.

“Yes, we do have to go. Angels aren’t supposed to reveal themselves or interfere on other planets, and yet someone has managed to do both in less than a day,” Shiro said, and glance at Lance followed the statement.

“But haven't you already done those things too? So it doesn't really matter anyway?” Matt asked, trying to coerce the angels into staying by blowing holes in the presented logic. He threw in a bat of his long eyelashes for a 'plus I'm cute’ effect.

Shiro considered continuing the dispute by defending himself, even if it meant staying longer, but his level-headedness got the better of him and he shook his head, as if ridding it of any desire to stay and chat longer. “Sorry, but we really can’t stay.”

Matt huffed a little, admitting defeat.

After saying goodbye, the angels used a glamour to turn themselves invisible and flew off, powerful wings carrying them far away from a planet Shiro had hoped to never return to and didn't plan to anytime soon.

Lance, as always, had a different idea.

 

“Well, that’s one way to spice up the morning,” Matt chirped, gleefully going about opening the coffee shop for the day as if two divine beings hadn’t just confirmed an after life as well as the existence of many other divine beings. “Sad they had to go. I wanted to ask if gods are real why I still failed so many finals in college.”

Keith snorted and rolled his eyes before looking at the door and muttering under his breath, “Good riddance.” He didn't like disruptions to his life, and he was ready for it to all get back to his normal routine.

Ha, the Universe said, looking at Keith as he wiped down tables and planned out the rest of his week, like that’s gonna happen.

**Author's Note:**

> First chapter done! Title is from "Of Angels and Angles" by the Decemberists.  
> Beta'd by @Forest_Prince


End file.
